I saw chocolate snowmen in the supermarket last week, along with a couple of German Christmas confections that I won’t bother to explain here. By the time Christmas rolls around, I’ll be sick of all of it.

That was translated, of course, but I didn’t bother attaching the “F”, primarily because I can never figure out how to type a degree sign on the keyboard I use. 60 would be a world record in Celcius.
P.S. @ Bill – If it does get that warm, it will only be for a day or so.
P.P.S. How about creating a tag for OT posts?

There are Hot Cross Buns available in shops now round my way… traditionally associated with Easter, but why not eat them all year round if you are so minded?

I am probably having a Christmas-lite dinner in mid-October – small turkey, cranberry sauce, Xmas pud, crackers and paper hats and so on. It’ll be my mother’s 92nd birthday and her granddaughter (my niece) is aiming to come down from Yorkshire with husband and kids (3 & 1) for a last visit before moving from the UK to Seattle. They haven’t been for an Xmas before, so it will leave the kids with at least some pseudo-Xmas photos with their great-grandma to look at in the early 22nd century when they are the same age as her.

Yeah, we’ve had Christmas cookies in the supermarkets for a good 3 weeks. Of course, those are meant to be eaten beginning on first Advent, so that’s like seeing Thanksgiving decorations in early September, but it’s still annoying. I don’t think I’ve seen any chocolate Santas yet. Those get given out as early as December 6 for St. Nicholas, but it’s still ridiculously early.

@Kilby: If you’ve got a fairly standard German keyboard, the degree symbol should be the shifted character to the left of the 1.

‘If you bake it, they will eat.’ Just as with Halloween candy, how much is actually eaten on 31 October? Many years (and pounds) ago, I started Christmas baking right after Halloween, but everything was put into a cold pantry in airtight containers and yes, it all kept very well until 6 December. That being both St. Nicolas (Sinter Klaas) and my birthday (I’m from Amsterdam originally), that’s when the cookies came out to be eaten, on what was the ‘official’ start of the Holiday season in our family.

At least part of the seasonal creep is due to increase in online shopping (and for a period before that, catalog shopping). A fair percentage of people recognize the need to order early for any reasonable assurance of timely delivery.

And speaking of plugs for books … (Sounds of a scuffle, followed by a door slamming)

Pretty sly linking it to Amazon to buy it. I accidentally did a slide click on my touch pad across the book as I moved the cursor and Amazon popped up. Momentarily wondered how that link happened, then I saw it was the book…..

@ Andréa – The answer is “much more than is healthy for most kids“. I remember gathering so much loot on one Halloween that I still had some of it left over well past Christmas. I have some friends who allowed their kids to eat as much of their Halloween candy as they wanted, but all of it had to be gone within a week, which (in retrospect) seems more sensible.
Later on, when I did a two-year stint as a teacher, the first day of class immediately after Halloween was one of the worst days in the entire school calendar. We tended to blame the kids’ behavior on elevated sugar levels, but lack of adequate sleep may have been just as much of a factor.

Hubby was an elementary librarian, and he experienced the same issues with kids; however, our city moved trick-or-treating night to the Saturday closest to 31 October (much to the complaints of various townships and villages nearby), so that was supposedly taking care of that issue. Unfortunately, as every village and town had a different trick-or-treat night, parents drove their kids all over tarnation to gather as much on different nights as they could. Wanted to get more use out of the costumes they’d bought/made for the kids, I assume (not).